The World Is Waiting

CountDown ③ [The World Is Waiting · The World Is Waiting]

Preface:

He had already lost the most precious thing of all—the ability to fight. What was the point of staying alive? Today, and in the bleak days to come, how could he prove that his life had value? What could fill his days? Just eating, drinking, and breathing?

On the rocky platform, inside the cauldron, the spiritual light gathering from every direction grew fiercer and fiercer. It was like a vast vortex, slowly drawing together specks of every color until it had almost become the only source of light in the night.

The man-eating sun had temporarily left Shambhala, and the man-eating earth could not interfere with this wish, either.

This might have been one of the few supernatural phenomena ordinary people without spiritual sight could witness with their own eyes. Brilliant spiritual essence erupted with the purest, most primordial energy—it was made of people themselves, of countless sentient beings.

Whatever their skin color or race, whether they were men or women, disaster-beast hybrids, or demons and monsters—

Back in this cauldron of thick soup, back in these deep, shadowy souls, everything—the beginning of beginnings and the end of ends—became one sentence, at once exceedingly simple and exceedingly complex, utterly selfish and utterly selfless.

The boiling spiritual essence surged into the great cauldron. The instant it touched the conglomeration of the immortal embryo, it turned into a beam of light that shot skyward.

Whispers merged into a succession of hollow echoes, rising and falling. It was impossible to make out what the words truly meant—

—perhaps they were the last few words the dead could utter. But they all became the same sentence, different languages telling the same story.

"I hope everyone in the world can be healthy, happy,